Practical tips for beginners.

[MusicMan]

........

I'm learning music stuff currently and it applies here too - you have to pick your technique to pieces rather than carry on rehearsing the same mistakes.
Incidentally, part of what brought me back to playing music was the realisation that it's just another craft technique which you have to learn, similar to woodwork, knitting, cooking etc. There is no mystery anybody can do it if they take the right steps.

Exactly, Jacob. A teacher can speed up the process by doing the picking for you, but you learn more thoroughly, if slower, by doing the picking yourself. In music slow practice is the trick, taking a speed at which you can play the passage perfectly - there is always such a speed. Then discover which note transitions are difficult and work on those.

I wonder if there is an exact equivalent in woodwork, though? You can't really slow down a process that uses momentum of the tool in some way. Shooting board, for example, maybe sawing. But what you can do is stop very frequently and check that the result is correct.

 

[Jacob]

There are vaguely similar tricks e.g. improving beginner's plane technique by doing it on the edge of a thin board rather than the face - it'll cut more easily and you can see how it cuts at different points along the blade edge, or with different settings, looking at the shavings as you go. A bit like picking the melody line out without the harmony, if that's not over stretching it!
And you can slow things down with a plane - instead of thrashing at it you approach with a firm grip and feel the blade catching the leading edge of a board. You can pause there and adjust etc. Then plane slowly but firmly.

But the main common feature of most craft learning is the need to put time into doing simple stuff well and often, otherwise you have no chance of ever doing difficult stuff well.
People are put off in the early stages by trying things too difficult and getting nowhere.

 

[MusicMan]

Good advice, Jacob. It took me decades to learn that it was OK to plane slowly, then my technique improved fast! It's a case where expert demos don't help , because they have learned how to plane quickly and you can't see the learning phase.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Simple but it works. I haven't lost a drill key or a "C" spanner in forty years - and it ensures you unplug the tool before faffing about with it.

 

[MarkDennehy]

At the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I'm going to give the three little things I've learnt in my incredibly long time (jaysus, nearly eighteen whole months!) doing this:

1) You need room to work in, and it has to be more than just the amount of room you need to fit the bench into. Wee shed is only 8x6 and you can do small stuff in there but... it's a bit limiting and you wouldn't want to eat too many pies. Plus you're playing a mix of tetris and jenga anytime you buy wood. It will limit how many tools you can have, but not in a nice way.

2) If you're going to spend a few hundred euros (or pounds, I don't judge) on tools and machines that are mainly comprised of hard things and sharp things, which often move or rotate very quickly, it's probably a bloody good (ha! see what I did there?) idea to spend thirty to forty euros (or pesos, but the shipping's a killer) in St.Johns on things like finger dressings and bandaids. Speaking of which, I may need to restock. Bloody chisels...

3) If you're going to build something for a date like christmas (ie. a date you can't shift easily), give up now. Or start six months before you had to. Seriously, you'll think you're done and then a little voice in the back of your head will remind you that you haven't built the drawers yet, or you're waiting on hardware in the post, or "What do you mean, the finish has to dry for a day between coats?"...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Another simple one. An old carpet tile and offcuts of ply make good, free sanding blocks.

 

[Billy Flitch]

Earlyer some one mentioned having a mirror in the shop I keep a small one in a draw and when useing a brace and bit at the bench place it a couple of feet to my right side, because when useing a brace and bit either plumb or square to the bench you can see only in one direction if its true. But if you turn and look in the mirror you can see it in the other direction.
So just keep switching your view and you can see if the bit is true.
When away from the bench a good way is to watch the spur on the bit when it starts to cut it should cut a complet circle then you know your at least close.

 

[novocaine]

one that is pretty much second nature and as such you don't think about.

saw blades are shiny, it isn't so they look nice, it means you can see the reflection in it from the wood you are cutting. sounds like that doesn't matter, but watch the edge of the piece as you cut, if it doesn't look like a nice straight continuation but instead angles up/down in or out in the side of the blade then you aren't cutting straight, make that line nice and straight and you will be cutting straight.